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DrNomis_44
31-08-2016, 06:12 PM
Hi everyone,


Thought I would get the ball rolling and start a thread about a custom fx pedal board I'm going to be making this fortnight, okay, so what is a pedal board and why do we need one?, a pedal board is simply a board of convenient size that you put all the pedals you use on in a logical arrangement so that it forms a single neat package, I believe every guitarist needs some kind of pedal board because it will make setting up onstage that much quicker and efficient.


The pedal board I'm going to be making is based on a design I saw in one of my magazines, I had to modify the design a bit so I could use the materials I had to work with, a mate gave me a piece of 13mm plywood that was 800mm by 450mm in size, and I bought some 13mm square timber, and some 90mm by 12mm timber from my local big green shed together with a couple of charcoal coloured carpet tiles, I'll explain what the carpet tiles are for shortly.

The 13mm square timber is to raise the 800mm by 450mm board off the floor a bit to allow some clearance in case I need to run some signal leads underneath the board, the Carpet Tiles are so that I can stick the pedals in place with Velcro strips, the good thing about Velcro is that you can easily re-position the pedals anywhere you like on the board, some guitarists like to permanently attach the pedals to the board.


I'll see if I can upload a scanned hand-drawing of my pedal board so that you can make one too, if you like, stay tuned.

keloooe
01-09-2016, 02:19 PM
Sounds like a plan Doc!

DrNomis_44
01-09-2016, 02:37 PM
Sounds like a plan Doc!



Yep....until it all goes pear-shaped...haha.

DrNomis_44
02-09-2016, 03:24 PM
Update:


Here we go, as promised, I managed to scan the hand-drawn design of the Pedal Board I came up with, I've created a PDF version of it so you can download and print it out if you would like to build one for yourself, enjoy!!:


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7787692/Pedal%20Board%20Design.pdf


Note: This is something I created for the Build Your Own Guitar forum as a way of giving-back for all the help you guys have been giving me with my guitar builds, so, feel free to modify the basic design to suit your own needs as you see fit, also, feel free to download a copy onto your computer and print it out.


Note 2: Since this is my own design, there should be no copyright issues whatsoever, and I am fully authorizing it's use by all the members of this forum including the PBG staff members.

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 10:46 AM
Update:


I'm just about to start doing some more work on my Custom FX Pedalboard, and will post some progress pics so you can see how I built it, stay tuned for more updates.


Okay, here's a few pics I took of the build-process of my Pedalboard:


First thing I did was to mark-out, cut, and drill two long pieces of square timber to go on the long sides of the rectangular half-inch piece of board I was using to make my Pedalboard:

13725

Next thing to do was to put some PVA wood glue on the square piece of timber after drilling some mounting-screw holes:

13726

I used some wood screws to attach the long pieces of square timber to the board, I also attached a 12mm thick piece of wood to the front of the board, this will hold the power board.

Next thing to do was to mark-out, cut, and drill some shorter pieces of square timber which were glued and screwed into place on the shorter sides of the board:

13727

The board now looked like this:

13728

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 01:31 PM
Next thing to do was to mark-out, cut, and drill a third short piece of timber, and glue and screw it to the middle of the board:

13730


I then attached four rubber feet to the board, that I had left over from putting casters on my Marshall amp:

13731


Don't you just love it when a plan you've put in place actually turns out well?, the next two things I need to do before I can call the new Pedalboard finished, is to spray-paint it with some Matt Black paint, and glue the two carpet tiles to the top of the board after they've been trimmed to fit, will post a pic of the finished Pedalboard soon.

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 02:02 PM
Update:

New Custom Pedalboard is now out on my balcony while the Matt Black paint dries, it should be dry enough to glue the carpet tiles in place in about an hour or so.

keloooe
06-09-2016, 02:36 PM
Crap Doc that will hold quite a many pedals!

Dedman
06-09-2016, 02:37 PM
Thats a pedal SUBURB!

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 03:24 PM
Crap Doc that will hold quite a many pedals!


I managed to fit about 8 or 9 pedals on the board when I was trying it for size, including the power supply for them too.

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 03:25 PM
Thats a pedal SUBURB!


Yep....hahahaha, I reckon I'll probably have all my bases covered, tone-wise....lol.


Just about to glue the two carpet tiles on the Pedalboard with some Kwik Grip glue, will take a pic of it finished and post it so you guys can check it out.

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 04:39 PM
And here it is, my new Custom FX Pedal Board:


13738

wokkaboy
06-09-2016, 04:42 PM
good job Doc, so the pedals just sit on the carpet or do you velcroe them on ?

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 04:50 PM
good job Doc, so the pedals just sit on the carpet or do you velcroe them on ?


Cheers, and yep, the pedals are Velcroed-on, or will be, the beauty of that is you can easily remove the pedals and place them elsewhere on the board, some people like to use Zip-ties to keep them in place.

The Velcro will stick to the carpet tiles.

I bought some Velcro tape from my local Officeworks shop, but it was a bit expensive at about Au$17.00 each for a 25mm by 1M roll, I'm sure there are other places where I could buy it at a cheaper price though.


Here's another pic of the Pedalboard, but this time with some pedals on it, they're not held in place by Velcro, yet though:


13739


I was able to fit sixteen of my pedals plus the power supply on the Custom Pedalboard I made. :)

stan
06-09-2016, 05:18 PM
good stuff Doc

Dedman
06-09-2016, 05:28 PM
didn't take you long to fill that up!
I had a delivery of a Boss RV-6 Reverb today...............been off in ambient land ever since. The Dynamic and Shimmer settings are trippy, far better than the built in effects in my Vox amp

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 05:52 PM
didn't take you long to fill that up!
I had a delivery of a Boss RV-6 Reverb today...............been off in ambient land ever since. The Dynamic and Shimmer settings are trippy, far better than the built in effects in my Vox amp


Boss do make some pretty cool sounding pedals, my current favourite Boss pedals are my Boss Compressor Sustainer, and Boss Super Chorus, I'm seriously wanting to get myself a Boss RE-20 Space Echo pedal, I know I have the Moen Pretty Dolly delay, but would be cool to have a second delay/echo pedal to get those Joe Satriani ambient sounds he gets, I think I might also get closer to that Hank Marvin sound too.


So, I may order a Boss RE-20 before Christmas this year and pay it off on Lay by, it's always good to have a good sounding reverb or delay pedal, there's a 1U Rackmount Valve Driven Spring-Reverb kit that I would so love to buy and build, I heard a demo of it and it was a very lush and natural sounding reverb.


How's your Dr Fuzz pedal going?

FrankenWashie
06-09-2016, 05:52 PM
I bought some Velcro tape from my local Officeworks shop, but it was a bit expensive at about Au$17.00 each for a 25mm by 1M roll, I'm sure there are other places where I could buy it at a cheaper price though.



You might try Spotlight if there is one near you, either that or another specialist sewing store, they usually do that sort of thing at a reasonable cost/m.

DrNomis_44
06-09-2016, 05:55 PM
You might try Spotlight if there is one near you, either that or another specialist sewing store, they usually do that sort of thing at a reasonable cost/m.


Cheers, I'll see if there is a Spotlight Store in Darwin later on tonight.

andrewdosborne
06-09-2016, 05:57 PM
Like it Doc. I think you have more projects than me on the go!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Fretworn
07-09-2016, 11:31 AM
16 pedals! Have you got a booster to combat signal loss? You will need a couple of power supplies as well.

wokkaboy
07-09-2016, 11:36 AM
Hey Doc the pedals look tight on the board in the photo, you will need space for the jack leads each side of the pedals. Does the 16 pedals you say that fit allow for the leads ?

pablopepper
07-09-2016, 12:05 PM
16 pedals! Have you got a booster to combat signal loss? You will need a couple of power supplies as well.

I thought you only needed a booster if they're all true bypass. Surely the Boss pedals and the fuzzface should buffer the signal enough if they're spread throughout the chain.

DrNomis_44
07-09-2016, 02:15 PM
16 pedals! Have you got a booster to combat signal loss? You will need a couple of power supplies as well.

Yep, you're right, I'm going to have to buy a second DC Brick Power Supply since there's only 8X 9V DC outs and 2X 18V DC outs on one of them.

DrNomis_44
07-09-2016, 02:18 PM
Hey Doc the pedals look tight on the board in the photo, you will need space for the jack leads each side of the pedals. Does the 16 pedals you say that fit allow for the leads ?


I'm pretty sure that there's enough space left for jack leads, I'm actually not going to be using all those pedals on the board once I've got it properly set up, I was mostly interested in seeing how many pedals I could fit on it when I took that pic.

DrNomis_44
07-09-2016, 02:22 PM
I thought you only needed a booster if they're all true bypass. Surely the Boss pedals and the fuzzface should buffer the signal enough if they're spread throughout the chain.


Most of those pedals do have buffers in them, there are a few, including the Fuzz Face, which are true-bypass pedals, and to be honest I haven't really had much issues with signal loss with any of my True Bypass pedals at all, mostly because of the footswitching that takes the pedal completely out of my signal-chain.

DrNomis_44
07-09-2016, 05:26 PM
Update:


I'm going to start wiring-up the new Custom Pedalboard shortly so I can try out my FX-pedal Chain plan with my Marshall amp, I've got a mate coming over for a jam and to test-out his Peavey Triumph amp which I fixed up for him, hope he likes how it's sounding now, the amp was stuck on it's Ultra Gain channel because a fuse had blown, preventing the channel-switching circuitry from operating correctly, I replaced some 1N4148 Silicon Diodes with some 1N4007 Silicon Diodes, which seems to have fixed things so the amp operates normally again.

DrNomis_44
08-09-2016, 08:33 PM
Update:


Just been doing some re-arranging of the pedals on my Pedalboard and have decided to add my Axis Fuzz and Octavia pedals to it, working out what pedals to include on your Pedalboard is basically a process of elimination, you work out what kinds of sounds you want to get and you then work out what pedals will get the types of sounds you're after, in my case, I'm interested in getting a range of sounds from Cleans, to Effected-Cleans, Bluesy-Crunches, Low-gain Overdrives, Fuzz-Tones (for doing stuff like Jimi Hendrix), and Metal sounds, I think I can get all that with the pedals I'm going to use, once it's all sorted I'll let you guys know what my pedal-chain is, and you can feel free to comment on it if you like.

keloooe
13-09-2016, 08:37 PM
I managed to fit about 8 or 9 pedals on the board when I was trying it for size, including the power supply for them too.

As we soon found out, that was not the case :D Couldn't just angle it all up a tad extra and sit the power supply underneath with holes coming through for power cables? Would definitely give a very clean look and also allow for better positioning of the pedals!

DrNomis_44
13-09-2016, 11:25 PM
As we soon found out, that was not the case :D Couldn't just angle it all up a tad extra and sit the power supply underneath with holes coming through for power cables? Would definitely give a very clean look and also allow for better positioning of the pedals!


That's true, so far I have been able to get a clean look by routing the power-cables in a logical way, also positioning the pedals logically on the board has freed up some board real estate so that I can add some of my vintage-style pedals, here's a pic of how I currently have my pedals positioned on the board:

13854


The pedal directly below my Red Fuzz Face is my Axis Fuzz, and the pedal to the right of the Axis Fuzz is my Octavia pedal, the light-blue pedal to the right of the Fuzz Face is my Rangemaster Vintage Treble-Booster pedal, I'm going to be adding a DIY Custom-built FX Looper pedal which I will be positioning in that vacant space just below the Tonebone Hot British pedal, this will switch between two separate signal-paths one of which will be called Vintage and will have all my vintage-style pedals, the other will be called Modern and will have the Boss Compressor/Sustainer, and Pitchblack+ Tuner, the output of the FX Looper will be routed to the Wah pedal, and then the signal will go through the rest of the pedal chain.

stan
14-09-2016, 08:58 AM
Nice rig setup Doc, some great classic pedals there

DrNomis_44
14-09-2016, 09:17 AM
Nice rig setup Doc, some great classic pedals there


Cheers mate, I'm putting a lot of thought into my Pedalboard as you can see, I think I've got it to the point where it's about 95% how I want it, just need to work on that last 5% and it'll be sorted.

stan
14-09-2016, 11:41 AM
you have a lot of the classics Doc, only thing missing is a Boss OD1...

DrNomis_44
14-09-2016, 12:16 PM
you have a lot of the classics Doc, only thing missing is a Boss OD1...


You know what?, I have been thinking of adding either a Boss OD-1, or a Boss DS-1 as used by Joe Satriani, to my Pedalboard, might see if I can get either an OD-1, or DS-1 on eBay at a good price later on.

FrankenWashie
14-09-2016, 12:25 PM
A couple of months ago, in preparation for moving, I went through all of my pedals, guitars, and general Accoutrement du guitar and ditched a whole heap of pedals and dodgy cables and patch leads.

I now see the error of my ways, I just needed to build a pedal board! Then it would have been organised and efficient, and there would have been no need to unload them all. Ah me. Time to collect some more!

DrNomis_44
14-09-2016, 03:22 PM
A couple of months ago, in preparation for moving, I went through all of my pedals, guitars, and general Accoutrement du guitar and ditched a whole heap of pedals and dodgy cables and patch leads.

I now see the error of my ways, I just needed to build a pedal board! Then it would have been organised and efficient, and there would have been no need to unload them all. Ah me. Time to collect some more!


Feel free to download the pdf of my design if you're interested in making one for yourself.

FrankenWashie
14-09-2016, 04:50 PM
Feel free to download the pdf of my design if you're interested in making one for yourself.

Way ahead of you!

DrNomis_44
15-09-2016, 03:22 PM
Way ahead of you!


Let me know if you have any problems making your Pedalboard.

FrankenWashie
15-09-2016, 03:57 PM
Let me know if you have any problems making your Pedalboard.

WOn't be starting for a while Doc, need to finish my Fretting Jig and Routing box first, then examine making miniature doll house windows for the better half's next kids project.

Though at the rate i'm going I may have DT final coat on the explorer by Christmas!

DrNomis_44
15-09-2016, 05:31 PM
WOn't be starting for a while Doc, need to finish my Fretting Jig and Routing box first, then examine making miniature doll house windows for the better half's next kids project.

Though at the rate i'm going I may have DT final coat on the explorer by Christmas!


Sounds like you have some interesting projects on the go there mate.

FrankenWashie
16-09-2016, 04:43 AM
Sounds like you have some interesting projects on the go there mate.

Yeah we have a lot on between she and me and little madam, it all keeps me out of trouble.

Dedman
16-09-2016, 04:44 PM
I built a board today, somewhat different ................no completely different to yours Doc. I didn't have a plan, just a pic in my head that I'd seen online. I'll be sanding and distressing it tomorrow to match my speaker cab, will post pics then.

DrNomis_44
16-09-2016, 06:03 PM
I built a board today, somewhat different ................no completely different to yours Doc. I didn't have a plan, just a pic in my head that I'd seen online. I'll be sanding and distressing it tomorrow to match my speaker cab, will post pics then.


Cheers, looking forward to checking out the pics of your pedal board mate.

DrNomis_44
22-09-2016, 05:57 PM
A good mate of mine phoned me up earlier this afternoon to let me know that a few more of my pedals had been found at uni (they had been packed away during last year's Christmas Holidays), anyway my mate said that he'd drop the pedals off at my place, the pedals are my two Tonebenders, my Chaos Fuzz, and my Jimi Hendrix Wah, I'd go and pick them up from Uni this week but I'm out of money for a bus ticket or Taxi Fare, anyway, will be adding the two Tonebenders (a MkI and a MkII) to my Pedalboard after they've had a new paint finish.


I don't know if any of you know about it, but last year Dunlop, the makers of the recent Fuzz Face re-issues, released a new Fuzz Face model called the Band of Gypsys Fuzz Face, this model is based on the one Jimi Hendrix was using during his Band of Gypsys era, it's basically a Red Fuzz Face with white control knobs, but as far as I've been able to understand from what I've read online, the Band of Gypsys Fuzz Face uses a totally different circuit to the standard Fuzz Face, it is based on the Roger Mayer Octavia and Axis Fuzz, so, since I'm a big Hendrix fan, I'm seriously thinking of building one.


Just been doing some re-organizing of the block-diagram for my pedal signal-chain on my Pedalboard, and here's what I came up with:

14027


I'm going to be building the FX Looper pedal this coming Tuesday after buying what I need from my local Jaycar Electronics shop, after I'm sure that everything is working right, I'll be using the Pedalboard to finish off doing the Doc's Blues demo I started earlier this year, the demo will be featuring the sounds I can create with the pedals on my Pedalboard and the Gold Strat.


The main purpose of the Blue Looper is so that when I'm switched to the Vintage FX path on the FX Looper pedal, I can switch out any pedals that have integral buffers in them, such as the Compressor Sustainer, Pitchblack Tuner, TS-808, and the Blues Driver, this ensures that there is an un-buffered signal going to all my vintage-style FX pedals in the Vintage signal path.

keloooe
22-09-2016, 08:57 PM
Hey Nomis, why is the tuner in a loop when it will mute the signal when engaged?

DrNomis_44
23-09-2016, 09:04 PM
Hey Nomis, why is the tuner in a loop when it will mute the signal when engaged?


It's mainly because the Tuner contains buffers in it, the Compressor/Sustainer also contains buffers, I was trying to figure out how to remove them temporarily from my signal-chain while I had my vintage-style pedals switched in, my Fuzz Face doesn't seem to like having a buffered signal going into it, putting both the Tuner and Compressor/Sustainer in a loop that can be switched in or out was the best solution I could come up with.

Fretworn
24-09-2016, 05:15 AM
Wah pedal after the fuzzes, that's a bit unorthodox. They usually go right at the front of the circuit. And yes traditional fuzz circuits can't have any buffers in front of them. I think That Pedal Show did a whole show on pedal order and the effect of buffers on certain styles of pedals.

DrNomis_44
24-09-2016, 05:49 AM
Wah pedal after the fuzzes, that's a bit unorthodox. They usually go right at the front of the circuit. And yes traditional fuzz circuits can't have any buffers in front of them. I think That Pedal Show did a whole show on pedal order and the effect of buffers on certain styles of pedals.


I had a good read of an article I found on the internet about Jimi Hendrix and the order in which he placed his fx pedals, as it turns out, Jimi Hendrix sometimes placed his Wah pedal before his Fuzz Face, and sometimes after his Fuzz Face, I found that when my Wah pedal was placed before my JD F-2 Fuzz Face (it's the round red pedal you see in the pics I've posted), I always got an oscillation effect when both the Wah and the Fuzz Face were on, I have tried modding my other Jimi Hendrix Wah pedal so it has an output buffer, and although it got rid of the oscillation, it changed the tone I got from the Fuzz Face, I have found that putting the Wah pedal after the Fuzz Face is a good compromise.


And yep I agree, putting a Wah after a Fuzz Face is a bit unorthodox and counter-intuitive, but I found that in my case it does actually work well enough.

DrNomis_44
04-10-2016, 04:08 PM
Update:


I finally got my Tonebender MkI and Tonebender MkII pedals back home from uni, plus my Jimi Hendrix Wah and another pedal called a Ray-Gun Chaos Fuzz, I'll definitely have to post a link to an audio Demo of it in the DIY FX Pedal thread for you guys cause the sounds it makes is a bit hard to describe, you really have to hear it to know what it does, might see if I can do a quick demo later on.